The former boss of the Bonanno Family was asked by a Prosecutor, "what powers you have."
Mr. Massino, sitting on the witness stand, provided a rapid response being diverted.
"Murders, responsible for the family, captains, pause captains," he said.
And it is thus that Mr. Massino, 68, the official boss of a family of New York crime to cooperate with federal authorities, appeared in the United States District Court in Brooklyn Tuesday and becomes the first to testify against a former Confederate.
For nearly five hours, Mr. Massino catalogued his wrongdoing, telling the murders and other acts of varying scope criminal.
Mr. Massino would have told the jury that the man at the trial, Vincent Basciano, former boss of the family acting, had spoken to him ordering the murder of Randolph Pizzolo, an associate of Bonanno. Mr. Basciano is tried for ordering the murder of Mr. Pizzolo.
But for much of the day, Mr. Massino established credentials and gave the jury its point of view of top, his philosophy of management of the crowd and his personal history - all larded with a steady stream of culinary metaphors and references.
"If you need someone to kill someone, you need workers - it takes all kinds of meat to make a good sauce," said the one-time conservator, consultant caterer and owner of the coffee truck, referring to what he said were the both skills Mr. Basciano as a killer and as an employee for the family.
He recounted from the crime from the outset as a 12-year-old, steal some homing pigeons. At the time wherever he was 14, he had run away from home; He said that he hitchhiked to Florida, get arrested for vagrancy in North Carolina on the road. In the 1960s, he said, he had progressed to murder, and he testified that he finally participated in a dozen murders, some he ordered some he has orchestrated and some that he helped to achieve.
Testimony of Mr. Massino also highlighted his Executive insight underworld in addition to his living of crime, a large part of this service of the family Bonanno, who he said, he had been affiliated with the 33 or 34 years.
His modest appearance, with heavy jowls, drooping eyelids and a broad chest, was belied by his answer authoritative to the Prosecutor, Assistant United States Attorney Taryn a. Merkl, which took him through his personal and professional history. (He will suffer no cross-examination to the Wednesday or Thursday).
Mr. Massino began to collaborate with the authorities after he was found guilty of seven murders in 2004, he faces life in prison and was set to go to trial for an eighth, for which he could face the death penalty. Testifying for the Government, he seeks some clemency.
Wearing a black and grey zip panelled held jogging with a visible White T-shirt as he alternately rested his hands folded on the edge of the bar of witnesses or his belly he answered his questions on his early crimesits rise in the Bonanno Family and its management of hundreds of members and Associates after become boss in 1991.
It presents as a master of the skilful bureaucratic maneuver, in its dealings with internal rifts families and other clans of crime, both in its efforts to thwart the application of the Act.
He described go the boss of the Gambino and Colombo - Paul Castellano and Carmine Persico, family respectively - in 1981 before taking preventive measures against three important personalities Bonanno who moved against his faction in a power struggle brewing. After having obtained their permission to kill the men, Mr. Massino and several other men they shot to death in an ambush in the basement of a social club.
He also testified about the codes that he and his confederates worked - to discuss murder plots and in a case to determine if a social club was bugged - without alerting the application of the Act, which he said he and his alleged Confederate may still be eavesdropping on their conversations. And he described some modifications, which he put into effect after became boss which were intended to reduce the risk that members of his family can incriminate themselves or each other.
For example, Mr. Massino closed all the social clubs of the family, saying that if members of the family hanging crime in these establishments storefront, they made use of the Federal Bureau of Investigation easier, because an agent conducting surveillance outside could see everyone come and go. "If you close the club," he explained, "it 50 F.B.I. agents watching 50 people."
He said, he was extremely cautious when and where he talked about mob business.
"You never talk about in a club, you do never speak in a car, you never talk on a cell phone, you never talk on a phone, you do never speak in your House," he testified, saying that what is called walk-talks, where two or more figures of the crime would operate a touring conversation as they walk the streets were safer. "You go on a walk-talk - I don't know someone who was never locked up or arrested for a walk-talk.".
He also said that it prevented the members of the family mention his name, even if, in an apparent Act of vanity, he told them that the Group had changed its name to the Bonanno family to the Massino Family.
While most of his testimony on the first day of the trial before Judge Nicholas g. Garaufis focused on substance of Mr. Massino and the history of the family and its leaders, Ms. Merkl has asked a number of questions on the man at the procèsBasciano m..
Mr. Basciano has already been convicted in another case of murder and racketeering, also before Judge Garaufis and was sentenced to prison for life in 2008. In this case, Mr. Basciano is charged with the murder of Mr. 2004 Pizzolo, who said prosecutors had insulted while Mr. Basciano was the acting boss. Mr. Basciano faces the death penalty if convicted.
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